Chapter 467 Basketball and Business 1
But Jake didn"t want to wait that long to talk to his mom, so when Jake saw that Eva was still awake he went over to the couch where she was and just took off the suit he was wearing to get more comfortable with his dress s.h.i.+rt.
"Hi, mom, I didn"t know you were going to stay up until this hour."
"I was waiting for you, I knew you wouldn"t belong in coming back."
"I see, it"s good that you"re awake because I have some good news to tell you."
"Tell me then."
"As I said to you, I went to dinner with Kate today, and at that dinner, I finally took courage and asked Kate to date me, and luckily she accepted."
"This is very good, Jake, I"m happy for you."
Eva hoped it could be something like this when she saw that Jake was so happy after going on a date with Kate, in fact, Eva hoped that Jake had already started dating Kate long before and maybe he hadn"t told her because of so much of times they went out together.
Just as she said to Jake, Eva was happy to know that he was finally dating the woman he loved, but she also couldn"t help feeling sorry for Lola who had now lost all chances of ever dating Jake.
Of course, Eva knew that Jake was not to blame for this and he was having a lot of consideration because of Lola, Eva knew Jake and knew that he wanted to take Kate to her restaurant someday, but maybe he would never do that because he had respect for Lola.
Eva also couldn"t help but like Kate who seemed a very independent and intelligent woman and also who really liked Jake, after all, she met Jake before he was an NBA basketball player and when he was not very famous.
"So, Mom, I was wondering if I could invite Kate over for dinner so you could meet, she always wanted to meet you, but here is the only place where you can meet."
"Of course, Jake, I would love for you to bring your girlfriend here, I also wanted to meet Kate."
"This is great, as soon as I sort out the details of the game, we arrange this dinner here at home, so you and I can prepare some special dishes and surprise Kate with better food than the restaurants we went to, Hahaha."
After that busy day, Jake can sleep peacefully and happily, the next day Jake woke up very early to go to his daily training, after a few weeks in that training Jake was no longer tired running the 45 km of the marathon or even in the 10 training sessions. thousand meters and 5,000 meters.
Coach David said this was a good thing because it showed that his resistance was improving and his muscles were gaining more strength with this new training after the Olympics Coach Davis was sure that they could improve this training even more.
Today Jake was not going to meet Kate because he wanted to give Kate a day to get used to the fact that they were dating, after all even though Jake was inexperienced Kate was even more so because Jake was her first boyfriend.
So Jake planned to rest for the rest of the day, it was good for him to rest his body and mind sometimes, from time to time Jake called to talk to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they talked about technology and the future of the internet and they talked too about the Google company that the two had.
Jake had already become friends with them and they both knew that Jake was a millionaire NBA player and also a marathon runner who won the gold medal at an Olympics, so they knew he was able to invest in their company if he was interested.
They didn"t know that Jake was a partner with Jeff Bezos on Amazon and also that he had money invested in the Cisco company, Jake wouldn"t say that either, and he just wanted to remind both of them that he was interested in the company, so when he invested a few million they wouldn"t be surprised very.
While Jake was resting he got a call from Davis Falk, Jake thought it was time for David to get him to rent the Miami Arena, so Jake could start talking to broadcasters before December.
"Jake, I have good news for you, I was able to rent the Miami Arena for December 17th, I was late because I negotiated a lot with them saying this was a charity game and I was able to rent for 40 thousand dollars for a day all."
Jake was very happy with this, he hoped it would cost a lot more than that, after all, it was for a whole day and he knew that before he went back to the past some rich people rented big arenas for 100 thousand dollars or more.
"Thank you very much, David, with this I can finally call to confirm with the players and already buy tickets and organize the hotel for all of them, now I just have to call the stations with the number you gave me."
"Good luck with that, I"m sorry, but I"m not going to be able to help with your game anymore, but I know that you will be able to make a good game."
"Okay David, thanks for all the help you gave me, I hope the game you are going to organize will be a success too."
Now that Jake already had the Miami Arena confirmed he could call the players again, he called all 17 other players and said the missing details, he said where the game would be and the day and also said he would have Adidas and other companies as sponsors.
So the players who didn"t expect that much from the game was much more excited and realized that Jake really wanted to make a great game as was the NBA games, Jake also said he would talk to the television stations to broadcast the games.
When the players confirmed again Jake asked Emily to send one of her a.s.sistants to contact the hotel and make reservations and buy tickets as well, Jake talked to the players and they agreed to come to Miami 3 days before the game to make a training between teams to play better.
And they were leaving the day after the game, so Jake had to book the rooms in a 5-star hotel for 5 days, and as he said that would be more expensive than renting the Miami Arena, to pay everyone"s airfare and for 5 days of the 5-star hotel would be almost $ 40,000.
Still, Jake didn"t care about that because he had raised $ 250,000 in sponsors.h.i.+p for the game, so the sponsors.h.i.+p money would still go to the charity even after paying all the costs.
Jake sought to hire some NBA referees for that game and succeeded easily, he also paid for a team that organized events to help the stadium team to take care of parking, game day sales and all the red tape.
With that, everything was fine for the game and Jake was just waiting for Kate"s call saying whether or not she could sing on the day of the game after that Jake would call the broadcasters with much more confidence in getting a lot of money for a charity.
After a few hours Kate called saying she would sing on Jake"s game day, she would sing the national anthem and two songs at break time, Jake thought it was great and thanked Kate because he knew that her manager would not easily agree thereby.
With everything he needed to be confirmed Jake started calling the broadcasters, Jake already had three broadcasters that he thought could buy the rights to that broadcast, Jake called CBS, ABC, and NBC first because he wanted millions of people could watch that game.
But the three broadcasters did not seem very interested in this game because they were new players and it was not like the All-Stars that naturally attracted the public, moreover, most players had not even debuted in the NBA.
But because they didn"t have any games to transmit and also because the income was for a charity, they made a proposal, but it was a really bad proposal that Jake thought they shouldn"t even have offered.
So Jake ended the contact with these stations and did not even say that Kate would sing during the game break and before the game the national anthem, so after thinking a bit Jake decided to call TNT.
He already had a good friends.h.i.+p with this broadcaster and knew that in the future they would be one of the big broadcasters that broadcast NBA games in the future, in addition, they had problems with the audience and had a lot of money too.
In addition, they already had contact with the NBA because they showed the NBA drafts every year when Jake told the representatives that David had pa.s.sed the number they soon became interested in the game.
"It will be a charity game organized by me in Miami, it will be a game among NBA newbies, most of them are players who haven"t even debuted in the NBA like me, and there are some players who came from last season"s draft."
Then Jake said the names of all the players who were going to partic.i.p.ate and also that the game would take place at the Miami Arena, unlike what happened at other stations, the TNT representative seemed really interested in the game.
Realizing this Jake also said that Kate would be on the day of the game singing the national anthem before the game and at halftime, Jake also told the sponsors of that game and that they could try to contact them to get their commercial to appear on the interval of that game.
After hearing everything Jake had organized, the TNT representative realized that Jake already had a lot of influence in the NBA and also among businessmen even before his debut in the NBA, as it was a benefit game, even if it did not attract a lot of audiences it would be good for the company"s image.